Sony's monitor warranty policy sucks

So my Sony CPD-G520 has been screwed up for the better part of a year. Being that the warranty runs out in 10 days, I call them up to get it fixed.

Turns out that they don't fix monitors that have a problem. No, they just ship you another one and you ship your old one back to them at your expense. Oh, and the monitor they ship you is refurbished.

This is not good enough. I'm going to call them again tomorrow and talk to a manager, because this is rediculous. First of all, why the HELL would I want my 3 year old monitor replaced with someone else's 3 year old monitor that's likely in worse condition than the one I have?

Secondly, even with Sony's "discount" shipping deal they have with fedex, I'm looking at $55 to ship my monitor back to them. This is absolutely absurd. I may tell Sony to stick it where the sun don't shine and go pick up a new Viewsonic or something instead.

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Welcome to the SONY world... PC Magazine frequently lists Sony's laptops as a good buy. But, where I work, several divisions, including mine, refuse to work on them any longer. They are a pain in the butt to fix and their warranties SUX!!!! 30 days if you do NOT send in the registration card, 90 days if you do send the damn card in. If you really look around, you can get add-on warranties but that's a pain too. We've had to replace 4 or 5 laptops for little things like the network port's solder breaks and Sony wont fix it and since the warranty is so short you end up spending $500 - $800 on a new motherboard.

For the price, Sony is good as long as it never breaks!!!! Try to get them to send the monitor to you first with a UPS or FedEx prepaid tag... Remember, their product died and you should pay for shipping.... good luck.

Unfortunately, MOST mfrs have the right to ship you a monitor that is already repaired to mfr specs for a returned monitor. So do most HD mfrs and video card mfrs do this. This lets them take monitors that are damaged in, repair, and not make owner ahve to wait what could be a long time to get the actual same montior repaired-- most all warranties say repair or replace. Even NEC says this in warranty after a certain time, which is a part of the total warranty time.

BUT, let's say you get a refurb (factory refurb). It is normally revalidated before being shipped, and if it fails revalidate checks, that same monitor will get parted out instead of being reshipped with same problems, and any remaining good parts used as repair parts on other refurbs quite possibly. MFRs cannot afford to write of build cost of two monitors for each bad one.

Look for a lot of this to happen, with lots of things. Would you rather wait a month plus two-way ship time, or get something working back fast??? Would you rather accept a factory-refurb that has been put through same quality checks as new ones are, faster??? And, why are there so many refurbs on gray market??? Because those that don't accept using the refurbs sell the refurbs and buy new again.

Note that the difference between NEC and some others is that NEC completely revalidates to factory warranty specs, all its refurbs. Sony also did, I do not know that they still do.

If a mfr does not specially state new replacement, but honors remaining warranty for what they ship, they are within legality to ship revalidated mfr refurbs in most countries. One reason NEC refurbs are expensive is just this fact, and one reason NEC monitors cost more is the revalidation plus the validation QC before first shipping new to make it less likely that returns will be needed.

Normally, refurbs from reputable folks are tied to original warranty to customer less time elapsed in warranty at time refurb is shipped. Then, reality speaking here, if the mfr literally has no more new of the particular failing monitor model, they do not need to switch and ship you a better monitor to honor the warranty of old one, adn lose profit from one that went bad and one that is being given with no incoming money in return to pay for building it.

This was so even in the 90's for lots of manufacturers, we got Seagate and WD factory refurbs back for warranty RMAs. The refubs mostly did perform to spec, though. And lasted about as long, because then they went through same testing before ship as orginal had done. I mentioned about a WD Hard drive, way back in anohter thread, that still worked ten years later-- and in fact still does work. What I did NOT mention, was that is was in fact a refurb purchased as same originally.

You can expect to get something working if your purchased thing fails while still under warranty, not an implicit extension of warranty along with replacement. MFRs cannot afford to do that. Shipping brand new on RMA is rare indeed these days. To get new, you almost have to get something DOA or out of warranty performance on arrival. Unless you want to pay NEC prices, do not expect NEC warranty handling-- TANSTAFL applies, big time, to warranty handling.

Best advice I can give Geeky is to take the refurb, try for a cross-ship with a prepaid pickup label because you are a customer with industry influence that needs to be treated as a preferred customer for good will reasons. In essence, play at being the hard-bitten curmudgeon who keeps going through supervisory levels until answer is a fair compromise, and who shows willing to accept fair-- if you come on too much like pure curmudgeon you get a strict meeting of legal obligations as response policy. Next advice, sell the thing and get a NEC monitor or possibly a KDS Pro-grade monitor (KDS has 5 quality grades to its monitors, P suffix is highest grade).